World War Z Extended Footage Delivers Action, Drama And Zombies That Just Won't Quit

Zombies, zombies, everywhere! Within the past couple years it’s been hard to step into just about any pop culture circle without hearing about the flesh-craving undead, the horrible creatures invading both the small screen with The Walking Dead and the big, most recently with the zom-rom-com Warm Bodies. But this summer, director Marc Forster and star Brad Pitt are taking the zombie infestation global with the release of World War Z, based on the brilliant book by author Max Brooks. And last week I had the pleasure of getting an extended look at the new film.

With the brand new trailer for the movie attached to prints of G.I. Joe: Retaliation in theaters this weekend, last Friday a small group of journalists including myself were invited down to the Paramount Pictures lot in Los Angeles, California where both Forster and Pitt were on hand to present 20 minutes of footage from World War Z. All in all we got to watch three distinct sequences from the early parts of the film that helped establish both the tone and the plot of the movie.

In the first scene, Gerry Lane (Pitt) is in his car with his wife (Mireille Enos) and two daughters stuck in Philadelphia traffic when all hell begins to break loose, kicking off with a garbage truck that completely smashes through all of the cars on the road before hitting a bus and flipping over. From there we begin to see the zombies start to rush in and from there everything is in full panic mode.

After managing to get out of the city by stealing a car, nearly getting bit himself in the process, Gerry calls a helicopter to pick up him and his family and they’re transported to an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean that is being used to shelter survivors. Our hero, who works for the United Nations, then meets the ship’s commanding officer, and after learning that there are no free rides on the boat, Gerry is given a mission: travel across the world to find out both what’s causing the outbreak and how to stop it.

The final sequence has Gerry overseas in Jerusalem where he meets with an official named Jurgen Waimbrunn (who is also a character from the book). Waimbrunn explains that upon learning about the explosive outbreak of the zombie virus in Asia the Israeli city immediately began construction on a wall around the city that would allow them to both protect residents and take in the uninfected. Despite all of their preparation, however, it proves to be useless as the zombies are able to pile next to the side of the wall and climb over, at which point, once again, the proverbial shit hits the fan.